An explanation of BROSR ideas *without* a single wrestling gif or muppet reference?
A well wrought article with plenty of citation. As complete a definition of "conventional play" as I have seen and though I've used all the ideas here before in my own games I will surely be returning here to study and refresh my understandings as I prepare for my next campaign.
An interesting read. I would love to see more development around game completeness. Particularly in how a particular game can reach it.
The problem is genre. Of complete games, as described here, there's only two flavors of sword & sorcery and a particular flavor of science fiction. But obviously, that's not the full breadth of game genres people want to play.
This is a distinct advantage of rules-light games (such as B/X or shadowdark). They lack rule completeness needed to maintain a complete campaign but the amount of work to a serviceable game of a particular flavor is minimal. That is, after all, the point.
I wonder if something could be derived from a precedence system as described in ACKS II. But that's a pretty large risk on the diagetic intent. Half-hazard rules are not always very good rules. It's an interesting conundrum. Of course, talented developers could always design a game from the ground up. That seems like a really high bar though.
Great points. It's clear you can also sense what is going on.
I don't have all the answers (yet), but all the arrows are lining up in one direction. Consider two of the mentioned points:
1) A game's "completeness:" it's not about how many rules it has or how many situations it covers. Rather, it's about the rules acknowledging and presuming that the gameworld is a complete Second World.
2) Rules-light advantage: In principal, there is nothing wrong with rules-light games (they are easier to play RAW, after all). But the SPECIFIC VARIETY of rules-light games available to us are light NOT because of incredible big-brain hyper-efficiency in their design BUT because they are rat-maze games where it is presumed the players will politely stay in the maze. Typically these are "adventure" games, where we're supposed to delve dungeons. If we muster large forces and try to take over kingdoms, we quickly find ourselves in need of ACKS or AD&D because the rules-light "adventure" game treats that idea as implicitly ridiculous.
We can see that these two points are actually one, for example. "Don't trap players in a rat maze," and "Maintain space and leave implicit assumptions for the Second World to behave in a natural way," end up being the same goal line approached from two different directions. With the right approach, these objectives (and their necessary support) could be achieved with any genre and/or theming, with the particular mechanical styling forming the character & feel of the game.
For my part, I envision a bright future with NEW games that are more than mere "adventure" games! I am trying to create, from first principles, a true contender TTRPG that can stand up to the greats and sustain a real campaign. It is indeed a difficult task, and maybe why everyone has been so forgiving for it taking so long. You can see a bit about it here ( https://primevalpatterns.substack.com/p/a-bmd-catalogue ).
Hmm. So game completeness isn't so much "How can the rules account for any given situation?" It's more "with how much fit can the rules be used to model every relevant actor in the campaign?"
That's very interesting and I think it's worth pursuing the limits of that.
What a sloppy directionless piece of writing. I categorically refuse the label of conventional play, and your definition is a definition only in your mind. Yes there are decidedly inane games ran by people copying what they see on YouTube but that does not define the common table.
There exists an vast multitude of playstyles across differing communities and time periods, but that does not mean that the definition of "conventional play" described here is not descriptive of a vast portion of the TTRPG community. Perhaps it does not describe your games but it does describe many.
An explanation of BROSR ideas *without* a single wrestling gif or muppet reference?
A well wrought article with plenty of citation. As complete a definition of "conventional play" as I have seen and though I've used all the ideas here before in my own games I will surely be returning here to study and refresh my understandings as I prepare for my next campaign.
Looking forward to BMD as ever. Excellent post.
An interesting read. I would love to see more development around game completeness. Particularly in how a particular game can reach it.
The problem is genre. Of complete games, as described here, there's only two flavors of sword & sorcery and a particular flavor of science fiction. But obviously, that's not the full breadth of game genres people want to play.
This is a distinct advantage of rules-light games (such as B/X or shadowdark). They lack rule completeness needed to maintain a complete campaign but the amount of work to a serviceable game of a particular flavor is minimal. That is, after all, the point.
I wonder if something could be derived from a precedence system as described in ACKS II. But that's a pretty large risk on the diagetic intent. Half-hazard rules are not always very good rules. It's an interesting conundrum. Of course, talented developers could always design a game from the ground up. That seems like a really high bar though.
Great points. It's clear you can also sense what is going on.
I don't have all the answers (yet), but all the arrows are lining up in one direction. Consider two of the mentioned points:
1) A game's "completeness:" it's not about how many rules it has or how many situations it covers. Rather, it's about the rules acknowledging and presuming that the gameworld is a complete Second World.
2) Rules-light advantage: In principal, there is nothing wrong with rules-light games (they are easier to play RAW, after all). But the SPECIFIC VARIETY of rules-light games available to us are light NOT because of incredible big-brain hyper-efficiency in their design BUT because they are rat-maze games where it is presumed the players will politely stay in the maze. Typically these are "adventure" games, where we're supposed to delve dungeons. If we muster large forces and try to take over kingdoms, we quickly find ourselves in need of ACKS or AD&D because the rules-light "adventure" game treats that idea as implicitly ridiculous.
We can see that these two points are actually one, for example. "Don't trap players in a rat maze," and "Maintain space and leave implicit assumptions for the Second World to behave in a natural way," end up being the same goal line approached from two different directions. With the right approach, these objectives (and their necessary support) could be achieved with any genre and/or theming, with the particular mechanical styling forming the character & feel of the game.
For my part, I envision a bright future with NEW games that are more than mere "adventure" games! I am trying to create, from first principles, a true contender TTRPG that can stand up to the greats and sustain a real campaign. It is indeed a difficult task, and maybe why everyone has been so forgiving for it taking so long. You can see a bit about it here ( https://primevalpatterns.substack.com/p/a-bmd-catalogue ).
Thank you for the excellent comment.
Hmm. So game completeness isn't so much "How can the rules account for any given situation?" It's more "with how much fit can the rules be used to model every relevant actor in the campaign?"
That's very interesting and I think it's worth pursuing the limits of that.
What a sloppy directionless piece of writing. I categorically refuse the label of conventional play, and your definition is a definition only in your mind. Yes there are decidedly inane games ran by people copying what they see on YouTube but that does not define the common table.
There exists an vast multitude of playstyles across differing communities and time periods, but that does not mean that the definition of "conventional play" described here is not descriptive of a vast portion of the TTRPG community. Perhaps it does not describe your games but it does describe many.
Yeah it isn’t descriptive of a vast portion though.
Exquisite. Truly.